If you’ve ever treated a “frequent flyer” patient with a case of “Nintendo thumb” or “Avatar blues,” you may be familiar with this list of 47 humorous nursing lingo terms. 1. PITA Definition: Pain in the ass Usage: The patient’s whiny girlfriend is such a PITA! 2. BATS Definition: Broke all to sh*t. Usage: That poor kid has a BATS fracture from falling out of a tree. 3. FMPS Definition: “Fluff my pillow” syndrome. A demanding patient that acts sicker than they really are. Usage: Watch out for room 304; she’s got a real case of FMPS. 4. CAH Definition: Crazy as hell. Usage: The patient is sweet, but I’m diagnosing his mother with CAH. 5. FTF Definition: Failure to fly. Usually used in cases of head bumps, but can be used to describe various traumas. Usage: She broke her leg jumping off the roof–I’m diagnosing it as a FTF. 6. Rotater Definition: A patient so complex or high maintenance that they have to be rotated to a different nurse each day to prevent staff burnout. Usage: She uses the call button so often that she’s going to be a rotater! 7. Dr. Too Long Definition: A nurse’s message for a physician who is tied up with a very long-winded patient and can’t escape. Usage: Excuse me, Doctor? Dr. Too Long needs to speak with you immediately! 8. Jack in the Box Definition: A patient who can’t stand or walk yet insists on trying. 9. FDGB Definition: An acronym used in the ER which stands for ‘Fall Down Go Boom.’ 10. F/U Definition: A shortened version of ‘Follow Up.’ Fun (and cautionary) fact: The contributor of this term actually got in trouble by the state surveyor for using it in his charting! 11. Crispies Definition: A patient who is a tanning booth victim. 12. Trainwreck Definition: A patient with multiple health problems and multiple diagnoses that has no business on a med-surg floor but doesn’t “qualify” for ICU until they code in the middle of the night. 13. The Whine Line Definition: A term used among prison nurses referring to inmates who suddenly need to see medical because it’s raining and they don’t want to go to work. In the hospital they are the uninsured that show up in the ER at 0200 with sniffles, etc. Usage: It’s cold and rainy out there. Gonna have a whine line this morning. 14. Malibu Barbie School of Medicine Definition: Where the resident doctors who wear six inch heels, short skirts, and acrylic nail tips attended medical school. 15. lantern test Definition: To shine a pen light in a patient’s mouth and see their eyes light up (i.e. they have no brain). Usage: She thought Smucker’s could be used as contraceptive jelly. I think she’d fail the lantern test. 16. young invincibles Definition: A term used by the healthcare industry along with the government to describe the growing population of uninsured twenty-somethings. This group is considered to be among the healthiest. There are many reasons why these young adults lack insurance: They’re no longer on their parents’ plan, they have jobs that don’t offer employer-based coverage, etc. Of the ones who do have insurance, many will decline either because of financial reasons or simply a feeling of being “invincible,” so it’s not a priority. This growing population of uninsured young adults is a concern of the United States Senate Committee on Finance and measures are being undertaken to address this problem. Usage: Every year, more and more of our new employees are refusing our health insurance. These young invincibles will have to learn the hard way! Synonyms: invincibles 17. Nintendo thumb Definition: A video game-related health problem classified as a form of repetitive strain injury (RSI). The symptoms are the blistering, paraesthesia and swelling of the thumbs, mainly through use of the directional pad, though any finger can be affected. This can lead to stress on tendons, nerves and ligaments in the hands, and further onto lateral epicondylitis (“tennis elbow”), tendinitis, bursitis and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). Usage: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Ow! I think I have Nintendo thumb. Synonyms: gamer’s grip, Nintenditis, PlayStation thumb 18. another one bites the dust Definition: A 1980s funk-rock song by Queen with a tempo that approximates the proper interval between CPR chest compressions when hummed in your head. Usage: Jane: Am I performing the chest compressions too quickly?” Tammy: “Ever heard the 1980s smash hit ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen? Just hum that tune, do your compressions in step with the song’s tempo and you’ll be fine.” Synonyms: staying alive 19. professional patient Definition: A person who feigns illnesses for various reasons. PPs often include malingerers filling a psychological need, drug runners seeking prescriptions or drugs to be sold later, and those with Munchausen syndrome. Usage: Man, this guy’s definitely a professional patient. As soon as we offered morphine, he quickly said it made him sick and asked for Dilaudid. 20. pumpkin positive Definition: The notion that a patient’s brain is so small that shining a penlight into her mouth will result in her empty head glowing like a Halloween pumpkin. Usage: Well, I just had a patient admit to using Smucker’s as contraceptive jelly. Needless to say she’s pumpkin positive. Synonyms: dumb, stupid, dolt, idiot, moron 21. Avatar blues Definition: The depression experienced by a select few people after having viewed James Cameron’s 2009 box office hit movie Avatar. The movie depicts an idyllic world with a tight-knit tribe of aliens battling to save their planet from human invaders. Themes in the movie include analogs to modern-day problems like global warming, war and capitalism, threaded together with a love story. The movie’s most prevalent feature is its cinematic effects, particularly 3-D. Viewers leaving the theaters have been said to reflect on their current life or how authentically it paralleled the destruction of our own earth, and a helpless feeling. CNN was the first to report this phenomenon, and it is disputed whether this is a true clinical problem or glorified reporting. Usage: Person 1: Jack’s not coming out with us tonight—what’s going on? Person 2: He fell victim to the Avatar blues. Same thing happened to him in 1977…but that could have just been his struggle with puberty. 22. Botox Raton Definition: City in Florida that used to be called “Boca Raton,” but they changed the name for obvious reasons. Usage: Halfway between Palm Beach and Miami, there’s Botox Raton. 23. fits Definition: Sudden attack or seizure of muscle activity. Usage: We were watching The Biggest Loser on TV and she just started having fits. 24. fighting Darwin Definition: A patient is fighting Darwin if he or she refuses essential treatment through stubbornness or stupidity. Usage: She’s refusing all medical care because it’s the Sabbath. Boy, she’s really fighting Darwin. 25. chart dehiscence Definition: When a patient’s chart is dropped and everything falls out. Usage: Oh! Not again! Second chart dehiscence of the night! 26. pack-years Definition: A crude indicator of a person’s cumulative cigarette consumption, equal to the number of packs of cigarettes smoked/day multiplied by years of consumption. Usage: We should really measure his consumption in pack-years. It’s probably close to 150. 27. jimmy leg Definition: An uncontrollable shake or tremor of the leg. Usage: I couldn’t fall asleep next to her, dude she’s got the jimmy legs. Synonyms: jimmy legs, the shakes 28. baci Definition: Bacitracin. An antibiotic used in wound irrigation operatively. Pronounced bass-e (bass like the fish). Usage: Tech to relief tech: “This has baci in it.” Synonyms: bacitracin 29. Band-Aid hospital Definition: A popular term for a healthcare facility that provides for minimal care of significance. Usage: I was hoping to get a job at a Level I trauma center, not at a Band-Aid hospital. I guess you don’t always get what you want. I learned that from the Rolling Stones. 30. noctor Definition: The nurse who just came off of a six-week training course and acts as though she is a doctor. Usage: What’s with the new noctor on the floor? Can you believe she had to gall to demand the patient with the Swan? Source : http://scrubsmag.com/top-25-slang-terms-for-nurses/view-all/
